3 in 4 Canadian adults bullied in school: poll

TORONTO – Three in four Canadian adults said they were bullied while in school, according to a new survey, while nearly half of the parents polled said their kids have been bullied at some point.

The Angus Reid Institute online poll of more than 1,500 adults sought to measure their experiences of bullying, perceptions of how serious the issue is, and thoughts on how well – or poorly – the country’s schools are responding to the problem.

Seventy-five per cent of the respondents said they were bullied at some point during elementary school or high school. Among them, 22 per cent said it occurred “once or twice” and 29 per cent said it occurred “a few times.”

Among the 24 per cent who said the bullying occurred regularly, often, or continuously, 37 per cent said they still think about it and 19 per cent said the events had a serious and lasting impact.

Among parents of kids currently in school, 46 per cent said that as far they knew, their kids are being or were bullied at some point.

Respondents were split on whether schools in their province were dealing effectively with bullying, with 51 per cent saying they were and 49 per cent disagreeing.

While the vast majority agreed that bullies need to be dealt with much more severely, they weren’t optimistic that bad behaviour would end in schools.

Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the statement: “bullying is never going to go away, no matter what new policies or approaches are tried.”

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error as they are not a random sample and therefore are not necessarily representative of the whole population.